In Monday’s post we were discussing the challenging problem of getting some real estate agents to realize that their photos are terrible. Long time PFRE blog reader Karl Punsvik of Narvik, Norway (Probably the northern most PFRE reader) made a comment that I think deserves some special coverage. Karl’s comment was:

“How Do You Get It Across To Some Realtors That Their Photos Are Awful?”

7 Responses to “Terrible Real Estate Agent Photos: A book of The Most Baffling Property Photos”

I found the “suggested” readings on the link interesting. The author of this book has a calendar version. Not to be satisfied with 12 pages, but total immersion with 365 days of eye opening experiences. Most of the other suggested readings focused on more appropriate application of photography and the one with the catchiest title was “How To Take Photos the Move Houses.” Customer reviews for both were interesting.

@Matt & Chris – Yes, this has concerned me to in relation to all the sites that post bad real estate photography. I seriously doubt that he has a license to use any of these photos because in most cases it’s a serious amount of work to just find out who the agent that took the photos is. I think he gets away with this because 99% of agents don’t even realize they have any photo rights to license. I think I’ll try to contact him and ask him about this.

I have links to several “bad mls photo” sites from my web site. Sometimes it’s the property or elements in the picture that are strange and not that the image quality itself is all that bad. It can be argued that the agent might have made some poor choices on composition. If it’s just that somebody has spent 50 years collecting Coke branded kitsch and loaded every inch of the house with it, there isn’t anything that the agent can do about it other than to keep pleading with the owners to start packing it up and let some light in through the windows.

The Copyright issue could be scary. If one person takes the author to task for using their image(s), it a “per infringement” assessment which could be a multiplier based on the number of books printed. Not just sold, but printed as that would be an indication of the extent the author has envisioned their endeavor going.

It’s really easy to find Bad MLS photo web sites and many of them draw from the same pool of images.